Chapter 725: When Going Out, Maintain Your Dignity (19)

The Imperial Five-Elements Sword Formation is a high-order sword array that braids together the five directions of Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth with five layers of depth—Yang, Rising-Yang, Neutral, Yin, and Frozen.

At its center, the demonic being suddenly drops its head.

As if it doesn’t understand how dangerous a sword formation is, as if it doesn’t grasp how precarious its own position is—when even staring down the enemy, assessing gaps, and plotting a direct breakthrough and escape route wouldn’t be enough—out of nowhere it lets its head sag, as if listlessly hanging and staring down at its own feet.

It’s in that moment.

Head, shoulders, and arms all line up as it bows, and those long, thin fingers stretch forward.

Up above them, the gigantic pitch-black Demonic Little-Water Hand spreads those twisted claws in the exact same shape, stretching them fully out.

The face of the assassin those fingers point at drains of blood.

In that instant, the other assassins dive in in a rush.

The three men holding the Metal position of the formation charge in at once and sweep their blades. KKA-GA-GANG! Three swords slam up into the demon’s hand.

The demon’s hand floats up.

Even after taking the combined strike of three high-level masters, those fingers rise slowly with a dull, massive weight—and then, slanting, carve a jet-black streak toward the far, distant sky.

The assassin holding the Earth-in-the-center position uses the opening and THUD, stamps the ground.

At the same time, another assassin shifting into the Earth slot plants both palms and shoves hard into the middle of his back.

Adding his own True-Step Footwork to his comrade’s push, the assassin is literally launched in a straight line, his blade driving for that nape laid bare by the bowed head, that exposed vital where jet-black veins stand out in clear relief.

But—THUNK.

The assassin’s body stops dead in midair.

A white hand grabs the sword, the Minor Water Witch’s Minor Water Art still, even in this chaos, a painfully transparent, dazzling white.

And then, in those calm closing fingers, the blade simply can’t endure it and SHATTERS with a JANG-CLANG.

When the hand opens again, fine shards of iron patter down.

The assassin recoils in a panic.

But the demon’s body doesn’t respond at all, as if it truly doesn’t care about someone who’s already backing away.

That’s why its presence presses down even harder.

Why isn’t it counterattacking? It knocks aside, deflects, and breaks every sword that comes at it, but it never actually moves to launch a counter.

Yet the moment they even think of letting the offensive slacken, those fingers swing toward them and spit out a black beam.

As if to say, keep going.

As if to tell these little nobodies to keep flailing, as it stands there in place, whipping them all forward and forcing them to keep throwing themselves into the attack.

“Just hang on a little longer! Youngban will be here any moment!”

Jang Cheonho roars.

In truth, he’s shouting at himself, too. People are afraid of what they don’t understand, and he has never faced an enemy like this in his life.

Is that a human or a ghost?

They warned that a demonic being whose body has taken in demonic arts is dangerous, but this is closer to some kind of aberrant monster than anything human.

How long did they hold out like that?

In exchanges, it’s dozens of moves—but with the number of assassins they have, the number of attacks they can hurl is multiplied by that much again.

In the end, it’s only a span of time not even a quarter of a quarter-turn—but has there ever been a stretch that felt this long?

And at last—

“You bitch! Heavenly Flower Sword!”

Youngban bellows as he tears through the air.

He vaults into the heart of the Five-Elements Sword Formation and immediately reaches out; a subordinate flips his sword into Youngban’s hand.

He steps on the Life Gate and advances. From beneath the blade, a vivid violet Steel-qi erupts, climbs up the entire length of the sword, and wraps all the way out to the tip, becoming a full sword-gang.

It doesn’t stop there. A faint violet radiance spills out—a precious color like the last rays of the sun under dusk, brilliant and blinding.

A noble color stretching out like sunset.

A purple sunset glow. They call that Purple Haze.

A secret of a great sect is blazing now in the hands of someone with no right to it whatsoever.

The demon’s hand comes up in front.

Still that transparently pale flesh of Minor Water Art.

A palm spread out, as if to shield its eyes from the blinding sunset glow.

At last, the Purple Haze meets the white palm.

THUP.

A quiet sound, like fabric being pierced.

The sword pierces the demon’s palm.

But that’s all. The blade that has gone through the hand can’t push any farther; it stops against the black guard.

Youngban clenches the hilt in both hands and leans in with all his weight, but the demon just keeps its head bowed and silently holds its hand up, blocking him.

Blood trickles from the hole in its palm.

Jet-black blood runs down, gathers precariously beneath the palm, beads into a single drop, and then, plop, falls.

In that instant.

From the center of the palm, from the puncture, blackness spreads.

A black darker than black—black so foreign it looks wrong to the naked eye—bursts outward, swallowing the entire white hand, flooding back up the sleeve, then rapidly staining the outside as well, racing across the entire body.

Before anyone realizes it, the demon standing there is nothing but a pitch-black shadow.

So black it looks like a hole torn in the world, a human-shaped abyss.

And the black demon opens its eyes.

Fine cracks spiderweb through the jet-black surface of its body; and then FLASH—countless eyes push the lids up.

Big eyes, small eyes, slitted eyes, grain-of-millet eyes, triangular eyes, crushed and warped eyes—some are a woman’s, graceful and beautiful; some are a man’s, blazing and thick-lined; some are round and soft like a child’s; some are the drooping lids of the old.

Hundreds, thousands of pupils all open in the same moment, bloodshot gazes savagely glaring out at the world.

“Wh-what kind of sorcery is this!”

Youngban shouts, voice cracking.

In that same instant, all those pupils swing together.

Countless eyes roll in perfect unison, GLOOP—an involuntary chill runs up the spine just looking at that nauseating sight.

And then—

Heaven-Breaking Demonic Qi is laughing. It has always been laughing.

In pitch-black darkness, the countless eyes are wide and bloodshot, weeping tears of blood, and only the soundless sound of muffled laughter echoes—the most mournful, most wretched laughter of someone forcing back sobs.

The believers keep their eyes open and watch.

The death of the believers is the enemy’s “justice,” and merciless killers are praised for murdering their brothers and sisters; they can only watch those scenes with their eyes open.

It is a life where they cannot throw their lives away, where they must survive to avenge the family who died, where they bear the most horrific duty of all—this obligation of revenge that commands them not to die even if they want to.

So they watch.

They cover nose and mouth so they won’t make even a single breath of sound, and they just etch the image of their dying brothers and sisters into their eyes, into memory.

That is why, inside hatred rotted pitch-black, only those bloodshot pupils shed bloody tears as they witnessed everything. They witnessed. They are still witnessing.

Countless deaths, countless grudges, asking:

The nation that was raised on our blood betrayed us and butchered us.

Then what rights do we have?

A potter’s work belongs to the potter; if something is wrong, isn’t smashing it to pieces the potter’s rightful, entire prerogative?

They do have rights.

The right to shatter the Central Plains and grind it to dust.

So the deaths of tens of millions demand their proper right: break it, smash it. This is a justice even Heaven has no right to obstruct.

This is the rightful order of things, the proper due that sinners must pay to their sin.

You built your nation on our blood and lived your lives with it, so we will destroy every life in your Central Plains and set the justice of the world aright.

If Heaven itself breaks and collapses, all on earth will be crushed and die beneath it. That is Heaven-Breaking.

The entire world owes them that debt.

The resentments filling Qing’s insides, at last, somewhere in that distant abyss, see the back they have searched for all this time.

The one who bears the duty of revenge.

An existence that will endure for ages upon ages without end to carry out their vengeance—a judge who will annihilate Heaven, a demon that will smother Heaven, a devil that will declare the end of the human world. The back of that demon.

You are our avenger, and so you are ours.

We are your tools, and so we are yours.

At last we are wholly one, and now we will once more enact the ways of the world—what rises must fall, what flourishes must decay—the natural order of ruin.

Heaven-Breaking Demonic Qi laughs.

For the first time, it truly laughs.

The countless eyes blooming all over the demon’s body all roll upward at once and vanish.

Only wide, white sclera remain.

And then, from the upper and lower lids, something grotesque sprouts—human teeth.

Hundreds, thousands of eyes all laugh at once.

Every one of them throws open a mouth and unleashes the mad laughter they’ve been holding back this whole time, opening as wide as they possibly can, yet with no sound.

A clamoring made of shape alone, a soundless howl.

The demon snaps its head up.

The demon’s pupils split in two.

Then each half splits again, and again, and again—into countless fragments, multiplying without end.

It is more horrific and revolting than anything Youngban has ever seen.

“Y... you bitch, just what are—”

The area around the demon’s mouth splits open.

Its face is already stained so black there’s no difference in light and shadow; you only know it’s the mouth because of where it opens.

The demon’s fist slams into Youngban’s belly.

His body ricochets like he’s been hit by a speeding iron carriage, tumbles, and skids across the ground.

Immediately, with the other hand, the demon yanks out the sword still stuck through its palm—

“Str-strike! Strike!”

Jang Cheonho screams.

The assassins, finally snapping back to themselves, move their feet again and resume the formation.

The demon swings its arm.

The Demonic Little-Water Hand has vanished without anyone noticing; now, fingers curled like a hawk’s talons rake four jet-black lines through the air.

Blood sprays.

Severed arms and legs bounce across the ground. The demon grabs the ankle of a fallen assassin and swings him; THUNK, THUNK—heads slam together and shatter.

Jang Cheonho swallows hard.

The demon hacks off its comrades’ limbs.

It grabs their bodies and swings them, guiding the formation’s blades and blows to stab and strike their own men.

It slowly presses a still-twitching head underfoot, crushing it until it bursts, then seizes it with both hands and KWAJIK—splits and pulps it.

As if—as if it’s just playing.

Jang Cheonho hurriedly throws Youngban’s arm over his shoulder.

“Gh... just what in the world is that thing—”

“Youngban, you must get clear! We’ll buy you time, just go!”

“How could I leave you and—urgh,”

Youngban’s eyes twitch at the corners.

His internal energy is rampaging wildly, some horribly cold force rampaging in his dantian, clawing through him in waves of pain—symptoms of Minor Water Cold-Poison.

He forcefully shoves that chill back, pens it into a corner of his body.

“I swore on the treasured sword His Majesty granted me that I would stand in front of you.”

“Youngban!”

“We die together or live together!”

“Forgive me.”

Jang Cheonho’s fingers stab into the spot just below the back of Youngban’s neck.

Youngban’s body goes stiff as a corpse.

Only his pupils roll frantically in rage, but Jang Cheonho grits his teeth, scoops him up in his arms, and bolts.

The demon’s eyes track that retreating back.

Its mouth curls open in a crooked, amused grin.

It turns its torso and steps forward.

“You shall not pass!” “Step over our corpses first!”

The assassins hurl themselves forward as one.

It is, truly, a devotion that could make you weep.

But when the second-strongest in the unit is fleeing with the strongest in his arms, no matter how fierce the resolve of those left behind—

If all it took to solve a situation were a noble mindset, why would anyone bother to learn martial arts?

THUD! The demon stamps its foot.

The ground in a radius of about five feet sinks down, a pit a good ten feet wide caving into the earth.

The assassins stagger all at once, crushed by that pressure—and in front of their eyes, jet-black beams are already there.

Behind them, the demon’s figure shows through, all ten fingers spread wide in every direction.

“Ah.”

It is the shared last word of several assassins.

Headless bodies drop to their knees in succession and pitch forward, smashing their shoulders into the ground as they fall.

As if neckless corpses are bowing.

Leaving them behind, the demon lightly—TAP—kicks off and lifts its body.